George Monbiot yesterday gave the crucial figures that need repeating. Capturing (+ burying) carbon from existing coal plants (if it works) will cost A$151-259 per tonne of CO2 whereas the Australian Govt is talking about A$20 per tonne initial price for CO2 emissions. The coal burning power stations will always choose to pay $20 or $50 or $100 per tonne rather than install carbon capture systems that will cost $150-250 per tonne.

Dr Ben McNeil, ARC QEII Research Fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre UNSW, gave the crucial evidence. He was chosen by Penny to give the big picture of the science. At one point he asked "why, if the car industry spends 4-5% on research, why does the mining resources industry spend only 0.3%". Because they know carbon capture is not going to work, Ben. Because even if a technological miracle makes it possible it will cost at least an extra A$150-250 per tonne, doubling or tripling the current retail price and that will be more expensive than existing solar, wind, hydro technology.

This is the elephant that Penny Wong and most Australian and British government members are furiously avoiding, planning and announcing new coal burning stations - the British in Kingsnorth and the Australians in Latrobe - even though their scientists are telling them it will always be too expensive to make them clean. It's like they've entered into an international pact with Coal. This is madness and Penny with her calm, reasonable argument is in the middle of it. . . read more

Coal power stations need to be, one at a time, closed as wastage is reduced and other generation systems are brought on line. There will be no significant carbon capture in the next twenty years, except by planting trees & biomass. Corporations that buy today’s coal power stations or build new versions of the same are going to lose most of their multi-billion dollar investment. They will be left to go broke like the builders of road tunnels that people don’t want to pay to use. Malcolm Turnbull knows the details on this but seems controlled by the UIC. A Liberal Party opposition that actually cares about business stability will not support a sell-off that will end in tragedy with the Australian public demanding coal power close down and business clinging to a costly investment.

This week Barry O’Farrell, the Liberal state leader, has the chance to rock a bad government and to prove that the “business party” can plan for a greener future. He could protect business from short-term-greed-long-term-pain and open a political front to a younger greener electorate that is so tired of Labor’s short term thinking. In just one week Barry, supported by Malcolm, could rewrite politics in Australia and reveal all the inadequacies in Labor’s response to Climate Change. It just takes one vote, Barry.  . . read more

I rang some businesses that install solar cells and discovered that sales have been down in most states except for Queensland where there has been a surge in sales. That's because in Queensland the state electricity authorities are paying a high "feed in tariff" to the homeowners for the excess electricity their small system feeds back into the electricity grid - a bit like the German system (where you can make a profit on your system). The Queensland system is not that generous but it is increasing sales. What if every Labor state did it? What if Penny made sure they did? I'll ask her tonight at a public forum in Petersham, Sydney.

Across the rest of Australia many people cancelled their orders but there's been an increase in the number of retirees buying. Their income has dropped below the cap so they can get the $8,000 rebate. And some who cancelled say they'll be back in a year or two when they retire. Ah, there's that baby boomer generation again - rock and roll on a solar cell.

Now the Labor parliamentarians are preparing to build a new government team but what will they have learnt from ex-Premier Iemma’s shipwreck? Will they see the need for an intelligent union-Labor Party strategy that actively transforms the electricity infrastructure of New South Wales and prepares for a greener future or will they see Iemma’s fall as a chance to reinforce the old status quo of an ever growing coal power industry that puts all its “green eggs” into the “waiting for Carbon Capture & Storage” basket?

In Germany this week at Schwarze Pumpe they’re opening a pilot CSS plant but the small amount of CO2 is being compressed into canisters and the expense is right off the chart. In Australia Tim Flannery just gave a speech explaining that growing trees and capturing CO2 in charcoal into the top soil will, for the next 10 years (& perhaps longer), be the only real way of CCS (Carbon Capture & Storage) and that worldwide the trees and charcoal could capture over 18 gigatonnes per year. That’s the scale of CO2 reduction that we need to be working on now. Will the new New South Wales government really face the facts and stop waiting for the tech CCS that will not come?  . . read more

You may have noticed that the SMH has not reported among the sackings, the dismissal of its veteran columnist Mike Carlton. So why is that not 'news' as far as the remaining staff and scab journos are concerned? And, furthermore, why is the Federal Government disinterested when custodians of the public good (the media owners) trash the infrastructure created by years of dedication, and the lives of those who created it - all in the interests of shareholders pockets?

The rights of media owners in such an oligopolistic market as metropolitan newspapers need to be redefined. And the independence of the editors to report on all the news and not just the news that suits the owners must be a condition of holding them. . . read more

More important, nowhere in the Constitution or in any other public document that frames the government of the United States is there mention that the president, a senator, a secretary of defense or any other federal official should have served in the armed forces. Military service can be ennobling, but there is no evidence that military service confers greater moral authority on a soldier over matters pertaining to war and peace.

Perhaps this explains why Americans automatically blame politicians for whatever is wrong — and politicians are rarely blameless. However, the record shows that whereas bad political judgment in war can often be rescued through effective military leadership, the reverse is rarely true... No, Obama needs no help from former generals or from anyone sporting medals to win in November. [More] . . read more

This trend has nothing to do with real supply and demand, since the demand for clean energy technology could not be higher. With oil reaching US$100 a barrel, it is clear that we badly need green alternatives, both as consumers and as a species. So why is "homeland security," not green energy, the hot new sector? Perhaps because there are two distinct business models that can respond to our climate and energy crisis. We can develop policies and technologies to get us off this disastrous course. Or we can develop policies and technologies to protect us from those we have enraged through resource wars and displaced through climate change, while simultaneously shielding ourselves from the worst of both war and weather.

In short, we can choose to fix, or we can choose to fortress. Environmental activists and scientists have been yelling for the fix. The homeland security sector, on the other hand, believes the future lies in fortresses. [More] . . read more

Given geoengineering's increasing visibility, debates among scientists, environmentalists, and engineers are not hard to find. But these debates center on the scientific risks and merits of the re-terraforming proposals. Few people, regardless of position, have focused on a fundamental non-geophysical risk of the method: political control, costs, and stability.

To put it bluntly, global-scale efforts don't happen without global-scale reactions. Should we see geoengineering efforts, there will certainly be struggles over control of the program(s), conflicts over liability for problems, and - most troublingly - independent "rogue" geoengineering projects undertaken in defiance of established guidelines. [More] . . read more

Politicians think leadership is about doing things better – thus the focus on productivity, efficiency, management. But our future does not depend on doing things better, It’s about doing better things.

That’s my new algorithm for the 21st Century. You can call me Al.  . . read more